A substrate is used to build structures or devices for the semiconductor industry. The devices are constructed using thin film deposition to deposit layers of materials to form conductors, vias, semiconductors, and other structures/devices. As the sizes of the devices shrink due to the demand for smaller and faster electronics, greater control over the thin film process is required to ensure proper device construction. The smaller size has led to a shift from using physical vapor deposition (PVD) chambers to atomic layer deposition (ALD) chambers. The ALD chambers allow surface control methods to produce highly uniform films over the entire device structure. However, when ALD chambers are used to produce barrier films, the barrier films have a high resistivity due to the low density of the ALD films, producing a poor quality barrier film. PVD chambers produce good barrier properties with high density and lower resistivity, but are non-conformal, resulting in improperly constructed devices on the substrate.
Accordingly, the inventors have provided embodiments of an improved process for producing barrier films.